Inspiring Change

After years of pursuing his dream of becoming a journalist, one USF alumnus stepped away from the daily grind of negative news and turned his attention to the good that people are doing to help others. The resulting work he’s done since then is nothing less than inspiring.

Written by Jim Muyo

Toan Lam ’00 had had enough. After years
as a television reporter covering more than
his share of negative stories, “death and
destruction,” he calls them, he knew he
needed a change. He wasn’t sure where he
was headed, he told a close friend, but the
time had come for him to move on.

Just as he was preparing to quit his job
as a reporter at KRON-TV in San Francisco in December
2008, he went to work one day only to be summoned to
the accounting office. “So, I went up there and they laid
me off, gave me a severance check,” Lam said with a smile.
“The guy that cut the check, he says, ‘You’re the happiest
person in the two decades that I’ve worked here that I laid
off.’ I knew I was ready for a change.”

But a change to what? When? Where? While Lam didn’t
know just what he’d do, he knew he needed time off to
recharge batteries that had been depleted by TV news jobs
in Wausau, Wis., Midland, Texas, Fresno, and at KRON.
“I was burned out by work, stressed out,” Lam said.

“I had never really even taken it in and enjoyed everything
that nature had to offer. I was running one day and I just
stopped and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really amazing. The
trees, branches were dancing.’ No, I wasn’t going crazy,”
Lam laughs, “I was just joyful.”

“After I got laid off I said I’m going to spend the next
year shopping less and eating out less and focus on using
my power to give back and use my resources and talents
connecting with people and telling their stories. That was
really a defining moment in my life.”

That moment ultimately led Lam to create GoInspireGo.com,
a media platform that highlights videos that he produces
of people who do extraordinary things to help others, often
perfect strangers. Take Jorge Munoz of Queens in New York.
After completing his shift driving a local school bus, he
comes home, rests for about 10 minutes, and then starts
cooking and distributing meals to about 140 New Yorkers
every night in a rough neighborhood under elevated
subway tracks.

There’s also the story of Phoebe Russell, a San Francisco
kindergartner who became upset when she learned that
there are homeless people who don’t have money to buy
food. Phoebe started a can collection drive at her school in
2009 to raise money to help the hungry. The effort caught
on, momentum grew, and ultimately Tyson Foods donated
10 tons of chicken. There’s also Herman Travis, himself
unemployed, who volunteers to deliver weekly food baskets
to approximately 60 families, mostly elderly and home bound.
But it’s not just about feeding the hungry. Other videos
feature Jordan Bower, a man making a pilgrimage in hopes
of inspiring people to disconnect from technology and
connect with one another. Bower’s journey is taking him
from Canada to Mexico by foot to meet and share stories
with people along the way. Other stories feature a group
dedicated to building a school in Haiti following the
devastating earthquake there in January 2010, a family
that sold one of its businesses and gave the $6.6 million in
proceeds to their employees to thank them, and an East
Bay teenager who traveled to Africa to lead the effort to
build a community brick oven and a garden in Tanzania
so that locals there can grow and cook their own food.
Lam does most of the reporting and narrating of the
videos, typically three to five minutes in length, in an easy
long-story style with a soft but purposeful voice that
allows viewers to get to know not just the subjects of the
videos but their back stories and what motivates them to
reach out to others.

“I really believe that we’re all born good people, and we
really want to help others, but people just don’t know how. I
think we all want to do our part to elevate humanity and do
something to give back,” said Lam, 33, whose title at
GoInspireGo.com is “Chief Inspirator.” “The difference
between us and a lot of other inspiring websites is that you
feel a sense of powerlessness after looking at certain stories
because a big corporation or a celebrity is behind an effort.”
In addition to asking “What can you do?” Lam’s videos
include a direct call to action through links to websites,
phone numbers, email addresses, and additional information
so that viewers, including those of modest means, can
send a donation to specific organizations or use their
resources or talents to help if they are so moved. Lam
realizes that not everyone can go to the lengths of people
like Jorge, Phoebe, or Herman. “We just show you that it’s
possible. Phoebe wanted to raise a thousand dollars and
we helped her multiply that. We helped her multiply that
to 135,000-plus meals.”

Story Teller in Action:
Toan Lam at a recent shoot for a new video for GoInspireGo.com with assistant Samantha Yarock.

Far removed from the death and destruction stories he
came to loath, Lam is using the story telling skills he developed
at USF through his reporting classes and at his
various television internships and reporting jobs to spread
good news—quite an achievement for someone who
confesses to having given up his own voice as a youngster.

For Lam, growing up was anything but easy. His family
came to the United States from Vietnam when he was eight
months old, leaving behind a successful cast iron nail and
construction business in search of a better life. Lam's Chinese mother and father gathered their five children,
one of Lam’s grandfathers, two grandmothers, and several
aunts and cousins for the journey. They ended up in
Sacramento, living in a trailer, and moving from “ghetto
to ghetto” where crime, drive-by shootings (including the
occasional bullet hole through their home), and the shooting
of friends was not unusual.

As a youngster, Lam was a voracious reader, reading the
backs of shampoo bottles because he couldn’t get enough
material. His love of books and reading, though, ostracized
him from his peers. They asked why he wanted to “be white,”
and why was he selling out. “Who do you think you are?”
they asked.

“So I remember giving away my voice, you know, literally,”
Lam said. “I literally grew up very quiet and timid and shy
because I essentially let these kids kind of take my power,
and it wasn’t until USF that I reclaimed it.” That occurred
after he hurriedly completed a short autobiography in an
expository writing class. He vividly recalls receiving his
paper back from his teacher, Carolyn Weber. “On the top
right-hand corner, in red, in perfectly written penmanship,
she put, ‘Toan, you are such a gifted and talented writer. I
hope you do something with it one day.’ It still gives me
chills, just talking about it.”

It was a revelation for Lam, who says his parents were
loving but in stereotypical fashion, never lauded him for
his communication skills or curious nature. “It was like,
‘You going to be a doctor? You going to be a lawyer? You
going to be an engineer?’ in that order,” Lam said in an
accent replicating that of his parents.

After finding his voice, Lam was determined to become
a print journalist. But, a chance encounter with his Asian
American Journalists Association mentor Matt Dunn during
his freshman year at a USF career fair led him to apply for
and accept an internship at a television show hosted by now-
CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien. The show was a partnership
between MSNBC and Ziff Davis Publishing. Soon,
another internship followed at KPIX-TV in San Francisco.
“So I went to KPIX and ended up working the weekend
news assignment desk. I started following a couple of
reporters around just to see if this would be something I
enjoyed. I was fascinated by the way the reporters conducted
interviews, the fast pace, you know, getting the news quickly
and first, so that whet my appetite. I thought this would be
something I’d want to do because I wouldn’t be sitting at a
desk all day.

“I eventually interned with Robert Handa (of KTVU-TV)
in San Jose two times a week. He took me under his
wing, and he was very tough on me,” Lam said.
Handa, a veteran reporter who has also worked at
KPIX-TV, KQED-TV, and KNTV-TV in the Bay Area,
remembers Lam quite well. In fact, the two have maintained
a friendship since Lam’s days as an intern.

“I would have to say that the tougher you are on somebody
generally means that that’s how much potential you think
that person has,” Handa said. “You want to make sure that
they understand because you don’t want them to waste that
potential.

“When we would do stories, Toan was always very
interested in not only what you need to do to cover the story
but also trying to learn much more about the person and
the situation beyond what you’d probably be able to use or
need to put in the story. I think that his compassion for the
human condition, the human spirit, that was sort of one of
the personality traits that came out at me when I first met
him. I used to take him on stories that maybe other interns
I wouldn’t take on.”

Also instrumental to Lam’s development as a journalist
and story teller was Associate Professor Michael Robertson,
34 a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, USF
faculty member since 1991, and director of USF’s journalism
minor. “Michael was very tough on me,” Lam said. “I had
a lot of office hours with him where I was very unhappy with
my grades.” Evidently, Robertson also saw something in
Lam. He told him in one of those frequent office encounters
that he believed that Lam would go on to be a journalist,
despite the tough grades that Robertson was doling out.

“I believed in him because he was getting internships
and he was thinking about it (journalism) in a way almost
all of the other students were not,” Robertson said. “He
was doing stories with Robert Handa and he was learning
how to think like a reporter and I really wanted to push
him to be good at it because I knew how unlikely it was
that any young person who wants to do that is going to
make a career of it. The odds are against it. The great
thing about Toan was that if I pushed him he would do
better. If I’d say, ‘No, no, more of this!’ He would do
more of it.”

The impact of both Handa and Robertson on Lam is
felt today beyond Lam’s videos. It’s trickling down to
current students at both USF and the Academy of Art
University where Lam teaches and writes curriculum.
“The reason that I teach now is because of my mentors,”
Lam said. “I said, ‘How can I pay you back?’ We all
get somewhere because somebody helps us, right? And every
one of them, including Robert, I remember, he said, ‘You
know what you could do for me? Give it back. Give back
what I’ve taught you.’”

But part-time teaching, while paying his bills for a simple
lifestyle, doesn’t do much for the time, travel, and expense
of producing GoInspireGo.com's inspiring videos. So, Lam
looks for private and corporate sponsors to pay the bills.
He’s passed up several lucrative job offers with six-figure
salaries from local television stations and a national network
because they didn’t “feel right.”

When he started GoInspireGo.com people would ask
him for his business plan and his projected ROI (return on
investment). Lam wasn’t focused at all on a return on investment,
seeking instead to simply tell those inspiring stories.
As for the costs associated with producing the videos, Lam
has received some modest donations of airline miles for
flights from friends. And, last year, GoInspireGo.com
achieved nonprofit status, so Lam has begun the process of
fundraising through grants and donations to help grow the
concept.

“Last year I was focusing on if the idea was working,”
Lam said. “Can we create stories that move people and
spark civic engagement? We can. So, this year I’m trying to
build the business side of GIG. I’m focusing on building
business, partnering, getting more viewers.”

Success is evident in the response to the videos. The
Phoebe story garnered more than 50,000 web hits, while
Jorge’s story received more than 140,000, including some
from high profile opinion makers. A member of the Obama
administration saw the Jorge video and in August President
Barack Obama bestowed upon him the Presidential Civilian
Medal, given solely at the president’s discretion. First Lady
Michelle Obama sent a letter to Phoebe thanking her for
her zest for activism.

What’s more, as the videos have stirred others to act,
the media have picked up on the story. Lam’s work has
been featured on Good Morning America. He was asked
by Arianna Huffington to write a regular blog for The
Huffington Post, and has blogged for Yahoo’s “Inspiring
Acts,” and Deepak Chopra’s Intent.com.

For Lam, though, it’s not about recognition. It’s about
doing something to help others. “This is what I love doing,”
Lam said. “And, I love the fact that I’m able to be a voice
for the voiceless because that was me. I’m not rich and I’m
not famous. But I care. I feel like I’ve finally discovered my
power, my voice, and I’m using it. I’m practicing what I’m
preaching.

“I’ve had several lucrative job offers of over six figures.
I make way less than that, but it’s so funny because I’m so
happy.” So happy, that for now, Lam is content to focus on
GoInspireGo.com, use his voice to tell those inspirational
stories, and try to make a difference in the lives of so many
people. ■

To see videos of Jorge Munoz, Phoebe Russell, and
others, visit GoInspireGo.com.